The World According to Blockchain

Question: Can Blockchain Scale?

The key to blockchain is that every node finds out about every transaction. That, however, leads to the challenge of keeping pace. Due.com calls bitcoin’s blockchain capacity "terribly limited." It can process 7 transactions per second (tps). The story juxtaposes that against Visa’s average of 2,000 tps and peak capacity of 50,000 tps. One answer is to increase the block size, in order to increase the space available and thus the speed. There are political challenges to doing so, however.

A lot of confusion surrounds blockchain, the technology upon which bitcoin is built. Essentially, it is a platform in which transactions aren’t controlled or managed through a central node. Instead, it is a mesh. Every transaction is updated for everyone. If person A does business with person B, people C, D and E are all automatically updated.

At this point, blockchain comes with a cost: A bit over one-third, 35 percent, who are considering or actively deploying blockchain feel it will cause "significant internal disruption." More than half, 51 percent, who are considering or actively deploying blockchain feel it will cause "significant" disruption to their partners and/or customers.

To protect the company from those insiders who abuse their privileged access and from hackers with stolen credentials, many companies are turning to a privileged access management (PAM) solution. ... More >>